Sep 25, 2026 · 17 min · 11 segments
Ventilator mode names vary, but the reasoning starts with the targeted variable, breath sequence, and the patient's work of breathing. This episode breaks down volume-targeted and pressure-targeted…
When you take a normal breath, your diaphragm moves down and the pressure inside your chest becomes more negative.
Now, of course, that helps us ventilate and oxygenate the patient, but that positive pressure also reaches two other things.
Before we get into the mode names, let's go through four settings you're probably already seeing at the bedside.
We base a lung predictive tidal volume on predicted body weight, which comes from height and gender rather than the patient's actual weight.
That's important because lung size follows height much more closely than it does body mass.
If two patients are the same height, but one weighs 100 pounds more, that doesn't mean the second patient has lungs that are, you know, 100 pounds larger.
You'll see tidal volumes in a range of about 4 to 8 mLs per kilogram of predicted body weight.
But from there, we look at the delivered tidal volume, airway pressures, gas exchange, synchrony, and the patient's response.
The bedside and the patient's actual response tells us how the patient is tolerating those settings.
In a mandatory mode, this is the minimum number of mandatory breaths the ventilator is set to deliver each minute.
If the patient triggers additional breaths, the total respiratory rate can be higher than the set rate.
Tidal volume multiplied by the total respiratory rate gives us minute ventilation, or the total amount of gas moving in and out of the lungs each minute.
When you take a normal breath, your diaphragm moves down and the pressure inside your chest becomes more negative.
Now, of course, that helps us ventilate and oxygenate the patient, but that positive pressure also reaches two other things.
Before we get into the mode names, let's go through four settings you're probably already seeing at the bedside.
We base a lung predictive tidal volume on predicted body weight, which comes from height and gender rather than the patient's actual weight.
That's important because lung size follows height much more closely than it does body mass.
If two patients are the same height, but one weighs 100 pounds more, that doesn't mean the second patient has lungs that are, you know, 100 pounds larger.
You'll see tidal volumes in a range of about 4 to 8 mLs per kilogram of predicted body weight.
But from there, we look at the delivered tidal volume, airway pressures, gas exchange, synchrony, and the patient's response.
The bedside and the patient's actual response tells us how the patient is tolerating those settings.
In a mandatory mode, this is the minimum number of mandatory breaths the ventilator is set to deliver each minute.
If the patient triggers additional breaths, the total respiratory rate can be higher than the set rate.
Tidal volume multiplied by the total respiratory rate gives us minute ventilation, or the total amount of gas moving in and out of the lungs each minute.
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